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busy doing not much
Even though I know and believe that I will be happy with either path--either the interview for the PhD position in Medieval Archaeology at the University of Bergen will lead to a job offer and I will move, or I get to stay here, in a place I love, still the background stress of not knowing if I will be moving in October seems to be effecting my ability to focus on work in the meantime. I know what the source is, I know it shouldn't be an issue, but still my log of work hours and list of work accomplishments makes it clear that I am not as productive just now as I would like to be.
They told me at the interview that it could be "at least two weeks" (at one point in the conversation) or "two or three weeks" more (at another point in a conversation) before things progressed to the job offer stage. Monday will have been three weeks, and I hadn't heard anything as of the end of the business day on Friday, so I will try to just enjoy the weekend and not think too much about it.
This is in total contrast to my reaction to my other job application that is still outstanding. Just before I went to Bergen for the interview I saw an ad for exactly what I am doing now, except full time, with a better base rate of pay, in a part of Canada where there is snow on the ground six months of the year (and since I love snow better than any other possible weather conditions, I applied, pointing out in my cover letter what a good match my CV was to what they are looking for). They sent a prompt "thanks, we received your application packet" note, and I hadn't heard anything further from them, and I pretty much even forgot about having sent it. However, yesterday I got a note asking me to please let them know my citizenship and/or permanent residence status. I wrote back promptly saying that I hold citizenship in three countries, Sweden, Australia, and USA, and that of these, I felt that Australia would be the most useful passport for a move to Canada, and sent them a photo copy of the Australian passport. So, clearly, they agreed enough with my assessment of the CV match to think it worth asking. Now, if I were them, and I had two candidates who are qualified for the position, and one of them is already legal to work in Canada, and the other would need immigration paperwork, I would choose the one who didn't need immigration paperwork, even if the other were otherwise a stronger candidate. Therefore I am not necessarily expecting that application to lead to an interview, but, on the other hand, neither would it surprise me if they did want to have at least a chat over skype. Either way, there is no sense of this one contributing to my stress levels.
On the other hand, my personal life has some nice highlights recently. Since last I posted we had the performance of the Kadrilj från Sörbyn, the 16 person dance that was traditional at weddings in this area a century and more ago. We did that at the Spelmansstämman held in Boden in conjunction with the town's 100'th birthday celebration. This is the first time that I have been to a Spelmansstämman in Boden, but during the event I found out why--it has been 30 years since the last time they had one! It was a lovely, fairly small, Spelmansstämman. I recognised a high percentage of the folk in the audience as being active in the local folk music and dance scene (Boden is a half an hour drive inland from Luleå, close enough that the two cities share a hospital half way between them. There is a small village near the hospital, but nothing else in the way of city development in the area--just a huge building not far from the highway sticking up out of fields and forest).
Since neither of our cars were working I got a ride out to the event with the lovely couple who organised our dance performance. They have both been doing folk and other dance in the Luleå area pretty much all of their lives--and I attended his 80'th Birthday party some years back, so he may well have met some of the people who did the Kadrilj från Sörbyn at the wedding in Boden 100 years ago--it was the fact that the dance got mentioned in the newspaper as part of the wedding festivities at the time that prompted us to choose that dance for the performance, and before we did the dance he gave a short lecture on the dance customs back then. They opted to head back to Luleå directly after the last of the day time performance and not stay for the evening dances, and I didn't have the motivation to ask after other possible rides home, so I went home too.
Much of that week David spent trying to fix my car. When I had taken it in for the annual inspection the week before I went to my job interview they said that it needed a new spring for the left front tire, and the extra break lights above the back window were working. We were given the deadline of the weekend I was in Bergen to have it done, and if not, then we wouldn't be permitted to drive it till it was fixed.
Since I was focused on preparing for the interview I decided not to worry about it till we got back, and David, who, having talked with his brother, who fixes up old cars for a hobby, felt that he would be able to fix it himself, was also busy just then, so he ignored it. However, his car had had a warning light for some important issue of the sort that doesn't make it impossible to drive, but if you don't do something about it there will be consequences later, so he booked time in the shop for that car. Then, while I was in Boden one day as he was driving between the house and the apartment there was a clunk, after which he could only put the car into certain gears, so he quit driving his car, other than to drop it off at the shop a few days early for its appointment.
This suddenly pushed fixing my car a bit higher on his priority list. Sadly, my car is old enough that pretty much everything that can rust shut had, so he spent one 13 hour day just trying to get the spring out, gradually opening up more and more things in hopes that one of the possible access points would work. A day or two later he tried again, and this time managed to get to it. However, in the process one of the bolts holding the wheel to the axel broke, and the shaft needed to be drilled out. While working on that he noticed that there was another part that was in bad enough shape that it needed replacing too, so the next day I did the bike ride out to pick up that part (half an hour each way), and the following day I biked back out to get the bolt and nut needed to put the tire back on the axel. He got everything back together on Thursday, and it started on the first try (yay!), and then we found the place where the wire to that break light had broken and he soldered it back together. The next day I took it back to the inspection place, arriving 5 minutes early. They looked at it directly, and I was out with the piece of paper saying we are good to drive for another year one minute before my appointment time.
Then I celebrated having a car by doing a largish grocery shopping trip, went home and cooked a bunch of yummy food. Linda, who is back in Sweden for a couple of weeks visit came over and helped me eat it and has been staying for a couple of days. She and I are heading south with Oscar later today for a birthday party of mythological proportions in Umeå (three hours south of here), which leaves my car free for David to use tomorrow for going to help his brother butcher the moose he got.
They told me at the interview that it could be "at least two weeks" (at one point in the conversation) or "two or three weeks" more (at another point in a conversation) before things progressed to the job offer stage. Monday will have been three weeks, and I hadn't heard anything as of the end of the business day on Friday, so I will try to just enjoy the weekend and not think too much about it.
This is in total contrast to my reaction to my other job application that is still outstanding. Just before I went to Bergen for the interview I saw an ad for exactly what I am doing now, except full time, with a better base rate of pay, in a part of Canada where there is snow on the ground six months of the year (and since I love snow better than any other possible weather conditions, I applied, pointing out in my cover letter what a good match my CV was to what they are looking for). They sent a prompt "thanks, we received your application packet" note, and I hadn't heard anything further from them, and I pretty much even forgot about having sent it. However, yesterday I got a note asking me to please let them know my citizenship and/or permanent residence status. I wrote back promptly saying that I hold citizenship in three countries, Sweden, Australia, and USA, and that of these, I felt that Australia would be the most useful passport for a move to Canada, and sent them a photo copy of the Australian passport. So, clearly, they agreed enough with my assessment of the CV match to think it worth asking. Now, if I were them, and I had two candidates who are qualified for the position, and one of them is already legal to work in Canada, and the other would need immigration paperwork, I would choose the one who didn't need immigration paperwork, even if the other were otherwise a stronger candidate. Therefore I am not necessarily expecting that application to lead to an interview, but, on the other hand, neither would it surprise me if they did want to have at least a chat over skype. Either way, there is no sense of this one contributing to my stress levels.
On the other hand, my personal life has some nice highlights recently. Since last I posted we had the performance of the Kadrilj från Sörbyn, the 16 person dance that was traditional at weddings in this area a century and more ago. We did that at the Spelmansstämman held in Boden in conjunction with the town's 100'th birthday celebration. This is the first time that I have been to a Spelmansstämman in Boden, but during the event I found out why--it has been 30 years since the last time they had one! It was a lovely, fairly small, Spelmansstämman. I recognised a high percentage of the folk in the audience as being active in the local folk music and dance scene (Boden is a half an hour drive inland from Luleå, close enough that the two cities share a hospital half way between them. There is a small village near the hospital, but nothing else in the way of city development in the area--just a huge building not far from the highway sticking up out of fields and forest).
Since neither of our cars were working I got a ride out to the event with the lovely couple who organised our dance performance. They have both been doing folk and other dance in the Luleå area pretty much all of their lives--and I attended his 80'th Birthday party some years back, so he may well have met some of the people who did the Kadrilj från Sörbyn at the wedding in Boden 100 years ago--it was the fact that the dance got mentioned in the newspaper as part of the wedding festivities at the time that prompted us to choose that dance for the performance, and before we did the dance he gave a short lecture on the dance customs back then. They opted to head back to Luleå directly after the last of the day time performance and not stay for the evening dances, and I didn't have the motivation to ask after other possible rides home, so I went home too.
Much of that week David spent trying to fix my car. When I had taken it in for the annual inspection the week before I went to my job interview they said that it needed a new spring for the left front tire, and the extra break lights above the back window were working. We were given the deadline of the weekend I was in Bergen to have it done, and if not, then we wouldn't be permitted to drive it till it was fixed.
Since I was focused on preparing for the interview I decided not to worry about it till we got back, and David, who, having talked with his brother, who fixes up old cars for a hobby, felt that he would be able to fix it himself, was also busy just then, so he ignored it. However, his car had had a warning light for some important issue of the sort that doesn't make it impossible to drive, but if you don't do something about it there will be consequences later, so he booked time in the shop for that car. Then, while I was in Boden one day as he was driving between the house and the apartment there was a clunk, after which he could only put the car into certain gears, so he quit driving his car, other than to drop it off at the shop a few days early for its appointment.
This suddenly pushed fixing my car a bit higher on his priority list. Sadly, my car is old enough that pretty much everything that can rust shut had, so he spent one 13 hour day just trying to get the spring out, gradually opening up more and more things in hopes that one of the possible access points would work. A day or two later he tried again, and this time managed to get to it. However, in the process one of the bolts holding the wheel to the axel broke, and the shaft needed to be drilled out. While working on that he noticed that there was another part that was in bad enough shape that it needed replacing too, so the next day I did the bike ride out to pick up that part (half an hour each way), and the following day I biked back out to get the bolt and nut needed to put the tire back on the axel. He got everything back together on Thursday, and it started on the first try (yay!), and then we found the place where the wire to that break light had broken and he soldered it back together. The next day I took it back to the inspection place, arriving 5 minutes early. They looked at it directly, and I was out with the piece of paper saying we are good to drive for another year one minute before my appointment time.
Then I celebrated having a car by doing a largish grocery shopping trip, went home and cooked a bunch of yummy food. Linda, who is back in Sweden for a couple of weeks visit came over and helped me eat it and has been staying for a couple of days. She and I are heading south with Oscar later today for a birthday party of mythological proportions in Umeå (three hours south of here), which leaves my car free for David to use tomorrow for going to help his brother butcher the moose he got.